One in three European Union nationals confess to being racist, according to a survey.

The EU Social Affairs Commissioner, Padraig Flynn, said the "shocking statistics" cast a shadow over the closing conference in Luxembourg of the European Year Against Racism.

The survey of 16,000 people, conducted earlier this year by the polling organisation Euro-barometer, shows a surprising number of Europeans are not embarrassed to admit they are racist.

Some said it was up to racial minorities to give up their cultures and be accepted by the majority.

One third said they saw themselves as "quite" or "very racist", and another third as a "little racist".

Now Mr Flynn is launching an action plan against racism in the coming months and will propose Europe-wide anti-discrimination legislation within the next two years.

The figures for Britain place it almost exactly in line with the European average.

Job fears ...

But in some countries the situation appears even more serious. In Belgium, more than half of respondents felt they were quite, or very, racist, and more than 40% in France and Austria.

A common characteristic among those with racist feelings was worry about losing their jobs, although there was no significant link between unemployment and the level of racist feeling.

On average only one in three of those interviewed for the survey said they felt they were "not at all racist".

Portugal registered the largest proportion considering themselves "not at all racist" with 58%, compared with 54% in Luxembourg, 49% in Greece and 35% in the UK.

There was no significant difference between the racist tendencies of men and women in the survey.

Racism was no more predominant in cities than in rural areas, despite fewer members of racial minorities in rural parts.

... and confusion

And views on minorities were sometimes contradictory. While 63% of the survey blamed minority groups for increasing unemployment, 68% said minorities did jobs that nobody else wanted to do.

On average, 36% said that to become fully accepted members of society "people belonging to minority groups must give up such parts of their religion or culture which may be in conflict with the law."

A quarter went further, saying that minorities had to "give up their own culture" to be accepted.

An EC spokesman pointed out that surveys on racism often elicit ambivalent replies - this one paradoxically suggests that nearly nine out of 10 people opposed any discrimination based on a person's race, religion or culture.

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